I’m Amanda. I’ve got wide eyes, a smart mouth, and a MetroCard. And I’m not afraid to use them.
So today I received junk mail that didn’t go to my junk folder. It was all about how I should celebrate Marriage Sunday on November 6 and vote yes on Prop. 2 on Tuesday to keep marriage out of the courts where it could be “permanently altered or perverted.”
Sam’s Visit (Condensed):
Tuesday:
1) Arrival:
Later than anticipated and scheduled. I curse thee, La Guardia Airport!
Another sigh, get ready.
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSIIIIIIIIIIIIIGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.
After Sam left for the airport, I went to the NYPL to pick up some materials I reserved oh so efficiently online. I picked up my short story collection, cd, and cd score. I then decided to go to Barnes & Noble and do what I occasionally do there. Not get books - no way, that’s what the library is for. I go to read magazines for free. Not just any magazines, either. I typically read the celebrity worshipping/bashing magazines with sections like “Stars: They’re Just Like Us!” I never doubt they are (okay, well sometimes) and I promise I’m not that shallow, but I do it because Domino Perez, my professor for Gender, Class, and Ethnicity in American Literature and Film said it was okay and even academic. Pop culture fascinates and disgusts me simultaneously.
I have a good connection with a few of my comrades at I.S. 666. Most people who stumble into a teaching job at any inner-city middle school 1. quit, 2. pretend that they’re okay with all the suffering and injustice, or 3. suddenly become experts, claiming they know what the fix should be, though they stay afloat in a very flawed system (that they could definitely repair if given the chance, mind you). My comrades and I fit none of these typical descriptions. We’re the smartasses. We are truly smart and can teach, but we don’t often get to. We’ve adjusted to an environment drastically different from all we have previously known. We care, but our sense of humor is really the shield that deflects the bullets. Until…? Until we move on.
The bell rings, signaling the end of lunch and beginning of seventh period.
Karen: Aww, man! Now it’s time for my Speds to come.
Me: So Paul Revere. “The [Speds] are coming! The [Speds] are coming!”
Karen: And I have nothing planned! What should we do?
Me: Ummm…
Karen: Oh, who the hell am I kidding? I could tell them to color a rectangle and it would take forty-five minutes.
I wrote this for my mom 5/9/04, and it really sums up what I want my mom to know tomorrow when she checks out my blog. I wonder if she ever changed my dirty diapers when I was a baby and predicted that I’d put her through even worse crap someday. Ha! Like puberty and a cross-country move. Even the preparation for the latter was arduous.
How exciting it is to tear off the October sheet of my at-a-glance calendar and start scribbling plans for November!
I’ve got to remember this one-liner for school:
“If you don’t stop being such a chickenhead, you’re gonna catch the avian flu!”
When your mama starts leaving anonymous blog comments wondering if your expensive laptop was stolen, what she really means is “No excuses - update your blog!” So, here goes…
Me: Omarr, please get back in your seat. You were working well earlier. I know you can do better than this.
Omarr: [locking eyes with me and smiling flirtatiously] Miss, you’re too nice to me. You never get mad. You don’t yell at me.
Me: I don’t feel I should have to yell at you to get you to behave, especially when you know how you should act at school.
Omarr: But I want you to slap me around sometime.
